Genesis 50: A Different Perspective

The book of Genesis ends with a funeral, a family reckoning, and one of the most grounding lines in all of Scripture. We walk through Genesis 50 as Joseph honors Jacob’s final request, returns to Egypt, and then faces the moment his brothers dread most: “Dad is gone, now Joseph will get even.” That fear makes sense if you assume power always turns into punishment. But Joseph shows a different way.

We talk about what it means when Joseph says, “Am I God that can punish you?” and why his response is not weak, naïve, or forgetful. It’s faith with clear eyes. The heartbeat of the chapter is Genesis 50:20: “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good.” We explore how God’s providence can be stronger than betrayal, injustice, false accusations, prison seasons, and the ache of being forgotten. If you’ve ever asked “God, why?” Joseph’s story meets you there, then invites you to zoom out.

From there, we bring it home with practical Christian encouragement: what would it look like to stop giving the enemy the glory for the ugliest thing that happened to you and instead hand it to God for redemption? We share examples of people who turned deep regret and long addiction into compassion, ministry, and real help for others, without pretending the pain wasn’t real.

If Genesis 50 is speaking to your story, listen, share it with a friend who needs hope, and then subscribe and leave a five-star review so more people can find the Bible Breakdown Podcast. What part of your past are you asking God to reframe today?

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Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation (NLT).
Copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation.
Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Transcript

Welcome And Daily Bible Rhythm

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hey everyone and welcome to the Bible Breakdown Podcast. In this podcast, we will be breaking down the Bible one chapter a day. Whether you are a new believer or have been following Christ for a while, we believe that you will learn something new and fresh every single day. So thank you for joining us and let's get into breaking down the Bible together.

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Why Genesis Matters To Freed Slaves

Genesis 50 Read Through

You Meant Harm God Meant Good

Turning Trauma Into Ministry

Prayer And Final Hope

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Well, hello everybody. Welcome back to the Bible Breakdown Podcast with your host, Pastor Brandon. Today, Genesis chapter 50. Final, final chapter. Today's title is A Different Perspective. A Different Perspective. Man, it is so bittersweet to be at the end of Genesis. I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I have. And I cannot wait to get into this grand finale and one of my favorite scriptures in all of the Bible. So we'll get into all that in just a moment. Make sure you get your coffee, make sure you get your Bible out, but also make sure you take just a moment to like, share, and subscribe to the YouTube channel and the podcast. Make sure to leave us a five-star review on the podcast. It really does help. And make sure you're going to the Bible Breakdown Facebook page. There's an amazing group of people doing a wonderful job there every day. And you can get all the information at the Biblebreakdown.com. Well, if you've been with us for the past like 440 days, it feels like we've so long going through the book of Genesis. I've loved it. I loved every second of it, especially when we frame it in this way. Like we think about the idea of this originally being written to this recently liberated group of slaves. Like for 400 years, they've heard the stories about God. They've heard about their, you know, their family has come from Canaan and all this kind of stuff. But for 400 years, they've lived in this polytheistic culture of all these other gods and stuff. And then after these miraculous things that we're going to get into when we get into the book of Exodus, that God set them free. And now they're at the foot of Mount Sinai and they're hearing the true story. You've been lied to for 400 years. Here's the story. It wasn't a group of gods, a pantheon of gods that created all of this. I did. God did, right? Yahweh did. And then he goes about and he tells them, and this is your story. And he tells them the story. And they hear about Abraham and then Isaac and then Jacob. And then they hear about Joseph and they hear about how Joseph was taken, you know, by force, by slavery into Egypt, where they just got liberated from. And now they're going, oh, that's how we ended up in Egypt. Thanks, Joseph's brothers, because they got sold into slavery. But then they're like, but wait a minute though, something great happened. We get down there and things go bad for a while, but then eventually God gives Pharaoh this dream. Joseph interprets it, he becomes second in command. It's just amazing what happens. And then eventually the brothers find out what happened and they all move down there. And I know I'm skipping over so much. They move down there. And then then the last chapter, Jacob is about to die. And he speaks of quote blessing over all of his sons, and who we know become the 12 tribes of Israel. And then he makes his son's promise. Please don't bury me here. And so we finish up this last chapter. And if you think about it, because you know Joseph's brothers have been thinking about it, the only thing keeping Joe, or yeah, the only thing keeping Joe from wreaking vengeance on all them is daddy. Well, dad's dead now. So they're going to reckon with this and we're going to see what happens here at the very end. So if you're ready, the final chapter of Genesis, Genesis 50, verse 1 says this. Then Joseph told the physicians who served him to embalm his father's body. So Jacob was embalmed. The embalming process took the usual forty days. The Egyptians mourned his death for seventy days. When the period of mourning was over, Joseph approached Pharaoh's advisors and said, Please, do me this favor and speak to Pharaoh on my behalf. Tell him that my father made me swear an oath. He said to me, Listen, I am about to die. Take my body back from the land of to the land of Canaan and bury me in the tomb I prepared for myself. So please allow me to go and bury my father. After this burial I will return without delay. Pharaoh agreed with Joseph's request. Go, bury your father, as he made you promise, he said. So Joseph went up to bury his father. He was accompanied by all of Pharaoh's officials, all the senior members of Pharaoh's household, and all the senior officers of Egypt. Joseph also took his entire household and his brothers and their households, but they left their little children and flocks and herds in the land of Goshen. A great number of chariots and charioteers accompanied Joseph. When they arrived at the threshing floor of Atad, near the Jordan River, they held a great, a very great and solemn memorial service, with a seven day period of mourning for Joseph's father. The local residents, the Canaanites, watched them mourning at the threshing floor of Atad. Then they renamed the place which was near the Jordan, Ebel Mezzarim, for they said, This is the place of deep mourning for these Egyptians. So Jacob's sons did as he had commanded them, and they carried his body to the land of Canaan and buried him in the cave in the field of Mechpelah near Mamre. This is the cave that Abraham had bought as a permanent burial site for Ephron the Hittite. After burying Jacob, Joseph returned to Egypt with his brothers, who all had accompanied him to his father's burial. But now that their father was dead, Joseph's brothers became fearful. Now Joseph, now Joseph will show his anger and pay us back for all the wrong that we had done to him, they said. So they sent this message to Jacob. For in their sin in treating you so cruelly. So we, your servants of God, excuse me, so we, the servants of the God of your father, beg you to forgive our sin. When Joseph received this message, he broke down and wept. Then his brothers came to him and threw themselves down before Joseph. Look, we are your slaves, they said. But Joseph replied, Don't be afraid of me. Am I God that can punish you? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good. He brought me to this position so I could save the lives of many people. No, don't be afraid of me. I will continue to take care of you and your children. And so he reassured them by speaking kindly to them. So Joseph and his brothers and their families continued to live in Egypt. Joseph lived to the age of one hundred and ten. He lived to see three generations of descendants of the son of Ephraim, and he lived to see the birth of the children of Manasseh's son, Mikir, whom he claimed as his own. Soon I will die, Joseph told his brothers. But God will surely come to help you and lead you out of this land of Egypt. He will bring you back to the land he solemn promised to give Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Then Joseph made the sons of Israel swear an oath, and he said, When God comes to help you and lead you back, you must take my bones with you. So Joseph died at the age of one hundred and ten, and the Egyptians embalmed him, and his body was placed in a coffin in Egypt. Wow. What an amazing ending to an amazing story. Even though it's not the end, it's just the end of Genesis. Exodus, which we'll get to sometime soon, will take the next step and say, okay, well, what happened after they'd been there? But we finish this moment in a very, very, like just amazing way. I mean, think about it. Joseph was betrayed by his brothers. He was sent off into slavery. You imagine you might have a moment where you say, God, why? Right? Mining his own business, and then betrayed by those closest to him. Then he starts at the very bottom of the totem pole at Potiphar's house, works his way up to becoming basically second in command over Potiphar's house. And then Potiphar's wife lies on him, says that he tried to assault her when he wanted nothing to do with it. It was her that was actually after him. But Potiphar believed his wife, so he threw him in prison. You think at some point in that moment he might have said, God, why? And then he goes to prison. Eventually, he gets put over the prison because the man seems to know what he's doing, right? And then he he helps these two guys by interpreting dreams for them, and he says, All I ask is that you don't forget me. I've been forgotten and misused by everybody else. Don't forget me. You know what they did? They forgot about him. You wonder if at some point Joseph said, God, why? And then he hears this amazing dream that Pharaoh has, and God gave him wisdom to know what it meant. And so he starts to do it. But you sit there and you go, I seem like I've got everything else I want, but I don't have my family. God, I wonder why. You know, and then just over and over, why, why, why did this happen? And then he then he has this moment where he has an opportunity to either have vengeance on his brothers and not have vengeance on his brothers, and he gets to see his father, but not for very long before he dies, all this kind of stuff. And then the moment finally comes when his brothers just they say they're sorry. And they just, you know, they're they're so afraid. And the moment when Joseph had probably, you wonder, okay, we're just gonna out like Joseph's human, you know, because he is. You wonder if maybe there were times when he was in slavery when he might have had that human moment and he thought, what would I do to them, you know, right now? Maybe times when he was in jail, what would I do to them right now? Now he has them. He can do whatever he wants. You know what he says? Don't be afraid of me. Am I God that can punish you? That can punish you. I love this verse, verse 20. It says, You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good. He brought me to this position so I could save the lives of many people. Wow. You imagine the amount of trust in God to go full circle. Many of us have had bad things happen to us, right? An understatement. We've had the worst things happen. Just things that we don't talk about, things that we've kept as a secret, things that nobody else knows about. Some of some of us can probably relate to some of the things that Joseph went through. Being sold into slavery, where your your body is no longer your own, where you are completely misused and mistrusted, when you're lied on, when when you're punished for somebody else's crime, when you're forgotten. And then when the people who hurt you try to come back and act like it's all okay. Just the worst things ever. But you know what he said? You were doing a bad thing for a bad reason. You intended to harm me. But God is so strong that he is even able to take what you meant for evil and use it to steer me and position me so that I could be a blessing to others. Wow. That's called a different perspective. And here's what I want to ask you as we end this this book. We're gonna move on from here, and it's just wonderful, but but I want my prayer is that these stories stay with us because these stories are our stories. The Bible said in the in in the New Testament that that that through the family of Abraham, you know, Jesus was was born. And then he says in Galatians that now we've been grafted in, and so there is no longer Jew nor Gentile. Like these stories are ours because we've been grafted into the family of God. And so this is spiritually our great to the 12th power, you know, grandfather that happened to us or happened to him. And he said, I am not interested in what the devil intended this for, I am interested in what God is going to use it for. What would it look like in our life if we looked at the ugliest thing that ever happened to us and we said, I am not interested at what the devil wanted to do with it. I am interested in what God can use this thing for and what he can do with it. You know what I've seen? I've seen people who committed abortions, who realized what they did was wrong, and that they ended a human life. But instead of letting it destroy them, which is what the enemy intended, instead they hold that moment close to their heart. And when they see someone else who's about to take that step, they get it. They get what that crisis feels like. They get what it feels like to not have feel like you don't have any options, and they turn that tragedy into a ministry. And I've heard people that said, I would never want that to happen to me. I wish I could take it back, but I can't. But at the same time, I was talking to this one lady and she said over a hundred babies have been saved because God gave her a story that she was able to share. It doesn't make light of the tragedy. It's not saying that it's not a tragedy, it's not saying that she doesn't mourn it every day, but instead of letting the enemy take it to destroy her, she gave it to God and it transformed her. I've talked to people who dealt with alcoholism for years, destroy their family, destroy their health. And then they quit letting the devil use it to define who they were. And they got one day back, and they got two days back, and they got their one year coin, and then they got their two year, and then their five year, and then they became a sponsor. And I've heard people like that say, I wish so bad I'd never taken a drink. And every single day I remind myself that's not who I am. But now I've had a chance to walk with 20 people, and all 20 of them are in their sobriety, and God used me, and I am taking a tragedy to happen to me, and I'm letting God use it to transform me into something fit for him. What about you? What could your story be? What what ugly thing is the enemy trying to use to destroy you? What if God could use it to transform you into a mighty, mighty weapon for his goodness? God can do it. But maybe God didn't bring you far this far to bring you this far. But instead he has a whole nother chapter right on the other side of no longer giving the devil the glory for what happened to you, but instead of giving it to God and letting it transform you. Let's pray together right now. God, thank you so much for today. Thank you for the book of Genesis. Thank you because it's a story of your faithfulness over and over and over again. I celebrate you today. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. One more time. The book of Genesis says in Genesis 1, verse 1, that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. If God can do that, anything is possible. I love you. I'll see you tomorrow for the next part of the Bible Breakdown Podcast.